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Tuesday, May 09, 2017

Overlooked Movies: My Favorite Brunette (1947)

I remember watching Bob Hope . . . well, as far back as I
can remember. He was always on TV when I was a kid: hosting the Academy Awards,
doing one of his frequent specials, or in some old movie being rerun. But
despite that, I never saw MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE until now.

Hope plays a hapless baby photographer who winds up in prison and is about to
be executed for murder. But before he's taken to the gas chamber, he tells his
story to a group of reporters, and that leads to the flashback that takes up
nearly all of the movie. It seems that his photography studio is next door to
the office of a private detective (played in an uncredited cameo by a big star
of the day) and Hope's character has always wanted to be a detective himself.
As he says in a voice-over, "All it takes to be a detective is courage,
brains, and a gun. I had a gun." Naturally, one of the real detective's
potential clients comes in, mistakes Hope for him, and he plays along with it,
hoping for some excitement. It certainly doesn't hurt that the client is a
beautiful brunette. Hmm, a brunette in a Bob Hope movie . . . who else is it
gonna be but Dorothy Lamour?

Anyway, you can guess what's going to happen. Hope winds up involved in a case
involving a missing baron, an international conspiracy, a knife-throwing
assassin (Peter Lorre), car chases, a sinister sanitarium, and the murder for
which he's convicted and sent to prison. Will he be saved at the last minute? I
think you know the answer to that as well as I do, whether you've ever seen the
movie or not. (And the ending includes another uncredited cameo that won't
surprise anybody but is still welcome.)

MY FAVORITE BRUNETTE is a movie that's consistently amusing without being
laugh-out-loud funny except on rare occasions. The mystery plot is convoluted
but mostly makes sense. Hope is his usual wisecracking schnook whose patter
breaks the fourth wall now and then. Peter Lorre doesn't have much to do except
act sinister, which he could do in his sleep by that point. Lon Chaney Jr.
plays a dimwitted sanitarium attendant, a characterization that leads to at
least one OF MICE AND MEN joke. This is certainly a decent film, although I
wouldn't put it in the top rank of Hope's movies. I'm glad we finally watched
it.